filing

Weekend minimalism: 10 quickies

Here are ten ways I moved closer to minimalism this past month. Perhaps these will kick off ideas you can use to become more minimal (or just plain declutter) in your home:

Photo credit: David Mao

One daily coffee cup

Think about your favorite coffee cup. Everyone usually has one, right? Consider making that your only cup. I packed away all but my favorite cup, a squat little black one with a handle that seems made to fit my hand. (I kept a generic set of six on the top shelf for company use.) I was surprised to find I missed none of my other cups so they are going in the donate bin. In fact, I loved the extra space around my favorite cup in the cupboard and my kitchen counters were clearer. Francine Jay, author of Joy of Less, calls this the joy of one.

Housekeeping of the mind

Remove all your ad preferences on your facebook page. Go under settings, the little icon in the far right corner and poke around looking for a section on preferences. It’s a visual reminder of how much information social media has on us all. This is a good activity to do while you are waiting in line somewhere and getting restless.

Family participation: set up a discard/keep station

Make cards that say “discard” and “keep”, set out the pile in a visible space and let everyone sort through it when it’s a good time for them. Accept the results without comment and get rid of the discards right away. Recently, I pulled all our teas out of cabinets and drawers, piled them onto our kitchen table; by the end of the day, everyone had sorted through what needed to go back into the cabinet.

Go bagless no matter what

Bring your own bags to the grocery store and, when you forget, find a way to still achieve the trip without accepting the plastic bags. (Cloth bags are strong and soooo quiet; now I can’t stand the plastic one-use bags.) One day this month, my husband and I swapped cars and it wasn’t until I was in Aldis on a major grocery haul that I realized I didn’t have my bags. My work-around meant putting my Aldis purchases directly into my car, then using a laundry basket when I got home to shuttle everything into my kitchen.

(Casually) Watch your word count

Minimizing words is a powerful bringer of peace. Over-communicating, then overthinking over-communication is tiring. Okay, maybe this is just me. A few weeks ago, I was overthinking the silence that followed a far-too-wordy reply I made to a friend. Rather than chase the situation with more words, I just released the matter and choose the reality that the silence was nothing more than the end of a conversation. Emotional energy is finite and realizing where to spend that energy is good mind housekeeping.

Photo credit: Giulia Bertelli

Release unemployed hobby supplies to find other jobs

Consider your hobby supplies to be your staff. If you are not putting them to work, give them their release papers and show them to another enriching employment opportunity.

I had two craft projects this past month: painting a few mirror frames white and making beeswax food wraps. Because I was not particular about what shades of white I needed, I easily found two used cans of gray primer and a few cans of white for free at my city’s environmental center. I finished the project within a week and, once the paints were idle, they went straight back to the  environmental center. When my beeswax project was done, I texted a crafty friend a photo of my remaining supplies and asked her if she would like what I had. She said sure and we made the handoff an excuse to have a coffee and chat. If both of us were pressed for time, I would have left the supplies on her porch.

Be a museum curator. Move your art.

If you have decor in your home, move it around as a museum curator does. By rearranging it, you’ll likely find pieces that no longer work. Replace them with nothing. Get used to wall and shelf spaces staying empty for a while and you just might love it.

I had art above our bedroom doors in our hallway. I had hung the decor almost a decade ago and I just stopped seeing it there. I pulled it all down, as well as the hooks on which it hung. Every piece was filthy with dust … remind me why I would want to make housekeeping a harder job? They are getting replaced with nothing.

Pretend you are moving away.

This is simply a thinking-ahead category rather than an action item. Pretend you are moving a great distance in a month. Evaluate the “travel-worthiness” of your biggest furniture pieces. Would you take those or would be cheaper to replace them in your new locale? This is the first step towards either saying goodbye to these things or keeping alert for more dual-purpose, transportable replacements. For me, I found that our table and six chairs were something I was just enduring rather than enjoying so it is getting replaced … someday. We have no indicators that we are moving but it’s good to keep light on our feet.

For smaller possessions, limit surfaces to three items or less when at resting position. This philosophy was borrowed from a minimalist on youtube whose home I admire. Simple and inspiring.

Fighting the paper tiger

I made a casual effort to chip away at incoming junk mail. Rather than mindlessly tossing junk mail in my recycling bin, I paper-clipped them to a note that told me to unsubscribe. For a few concentrated minutes each week, I requested removals from mailing lists, usually by online means but sometimes via a standardized snail-mail letter. This was completely worth the (small) effort. I’ll elaborate more in a future blog post.

My incredibly-shrinking book collection

I had 50 books at the beginning of the weekend. I gathered them together and held each one in my hands. After my joy-sparking session (one of a series), I ended the weekend with 35 books. Private book collections should only include already-read-it favorites and no more.

Zero-wasting your mailbox

Lots of us think junk mail is best handled the easiest way: by opening your mail over a recycling bin. With busy lives, this might be all we can do, but what a temporary and repetitive fix that is. I took a good, hard look into my mailbox in the month of July. I dug into the minutiae of junk mail. I hope what I share here helps you reduce your mail to its essentials.

Here’s your “why”:

So let’s look at the outcome of a mailbox that is free of junk mail, since wanting something is the first step in getting it.

Real mail is useful. Imagine going to your mailbox and finding only a few pieces in there. Each one has something that is a matter of importance, something that needs your attention in order to make your life better. Some of the pieces are even matters of urgency and you are able to address the issues before a deadline.

When I made no-tolerance-for-junk-mail my focus this past month, a “real mail mailbox” started becoming my reality. For instance, I got a reminder for my annual sonogram … and it got scheduled that day! My mail also alerted me to a hold on a university account, a credit report error, and a mediation update. All of them were actionable matters of some urgency. All of them got dealt with right away. Junk mail would have disguised all of these important pieces of mail.

Of course, there are the environmental impacts of all that ink and paper. I will leave the particulars to other bloggers but recognize here that this concern for the environment can also fuel your motivation to stop junk mail.

Step 1: Automate your refusals.

Start with DMAchoice.org to clean out your general junk mail, optoutprescreen.com to halt credit card offers, and yellowpagesoptout.com to stop phone directories. Then use the  PaperKarma app on your phone for any straggling bits of junk mail.

DMAchoice is reported to take out 80% of junk mail. I set up my DMAchoice account and unsubscribed from everything in May. It took until July for me to see a reduction and I would say the 80% seems higher than my results but I did see a significant decrease in my junk mail over 60 days.

I did not use PaperKarma and wonder how much time I could have saved myself if I did.

Step 2: Wait a few months …

… then start a mail log. (This is an optional step.)

There is power in log-keeping. Keeping a food log helps dieters make fewer bad choices. “I didn’t want to put in my food log that I ate a Reeses cup, so I didn’t eat it.” In the same way, logging your mail means you no longer tolerate what doesn’t belong in your mailbox, then on your desk, then in your mind where you mentally file it under “things that pants up my life”.

Logging my mail took a few minute a day at first, then less as my mail decreased. The hassle of formally tracking repeat senders gave me extra motivation to get them out of my mail stream. On more than one occasion, I looked at my mail and said out loud “Again? I have requested twice that you take me off your list.” Mail is so much in the background of our lives and we become complacent about it far too fast. I would not have seen progress at first unless I tracked it. I had 6 days out of 26 where the postal worker had absolutely no mail to put in my box; I would have never appreciated that tiny step of progress without a written record of it.

Step 3: Take a pen with you to your mailbox.

You are going to write “refused, returned to sender” on some junk mail and pop it back in your mailbox.

One of the biggest current sources of junk mail is through the USPS program known as EDDM (Every Door Direct Mail). This is that irritating mail addressed to “tenant” or “resident” or other generic names.

This was one junk mail battle I have yet to win. Even though I have opted out and unsubscribed from so much, my EDDM junk mail still accounted for almost half my incoming mail in July. Fifteen out of my total 32 pieces of mail were EDDM. For weeks, my internet research told me there is no way to opt out of this service, since marketers pay to deliver to every house in a postal carrier route. I even taped a small sign refusing EDDM. It was totally ineffectual; appealing to your postal carrier is apparently not the way to get rid of this kind of mailbox scourge.

Just when I was starting to lose hope, I discovered this tip.

Mail sent to “Resident,” “Current Resident,” or “Current Occupant” (In other words, EDDM) can be refused if it contains any of these phrases,

  • return service requested,

  • forwarding service requested,

  • address service requested

  • change service requested.

  • or is sent First Class.

Write “refused, returned to sender”  on the unopened envelope and put it back in the mailbox.

Step 4: Involve your family

If your family keeps getting their own junk mail, it stops your clean mailbox project in its tracks. I sat next to my kids and walked them through opt-outs of everything from credit card offers to shoe store flyers to bank statements to long-past social groups. My husband joined my efforts and opted for online communications from college alum groups, past employer’s retirement accounts, and memberships.

Step 5: Clean out your junk electronic mail at the same time.

I cleaned out my email junk at the same time as my mailbox junk. When I asked senders like my bank, for instance, to move its notifications to email, I had an emailbox prepared to handle more of my essential business.

Some people I know used unroll.me to clear out junk emails and they get good results. I went about my email cleanup the long way: I sorted my junk email folder by sender and just started unsubscribing from every sender. I noticed patterns in the senders and was able to take out groups of senders with the email rules I created. Still, I wonder how much time I would have saved myself had I used unroll.me.

Step 6: Get off coupon packet lists. (Psst, all those coupons are online!)

The huge packets of coupons in my mailbox are redundant. I found the exact same coupons of my favorite service providers online.

Let the need for a purchase or service arise first, then look online for the coupon. Don’t accumulate paper coupons while you wait for the need to arise. Under the 80/20 rule, collecting coupons is spending 80% of your efforts on 20% of your results.

I was able to unsubscribe from RetailMeNot (redplum), Valassis, and other coupon packet companies easily online.

Step 7: Realize your guilt mail

The thought of unsubscribing from my favorite charities’ mail kicked up some guilt. I have no idea why, but I rationalized that I didn’t want to hurt their feelings by telling them I didn’t want their publications. My refusal felt like I was breaking off a friendship. In these cases, I found that writing a heartfelt letter of thanks and support helped. I explained that I follow them online and wanted to save their resources. (I do believe those letters were more for my benefit than theirs.) I then popped a monthly reminder in my phone to read their websites and online news.

Step 8: And then there’s nuisance mail …

This is that targeted junk mail that I somehow invited into my life. Maybe I am their ongoing customer or I signed up for a contest or I submitted a rebate. Getting rid of this kind of mail takes going directly to the source, at least in my case.

These companies do not make it easy for you to unsubscribe. It takes special effort to contact them, so use these magic words when you do reach them: “Please do not rent, sell, or trade my name or address.”

Right now, my own phone company tries to upsell me every 2 weeks or so with their glossy postcard offers; meanwhile their competitors send me fake checks to entice me to switch. (I know this frequency because I recorded their mail in my log, not because I have a fantastic attention to detail.) I have yet to use the magic words but I am looking forward to getting this done and seeing a clearer mailbox.

I found that unsubscribing from a catalog is completely undone when you purchase something from that company later. I plan to whip out my magic words (PLEEEASE do not rent, sell or trade my name or addressssssss) for every transaction.

Here’s wishing us all clearer mailboxes and minds.